Dell has made its intention known in the e-book market by releasing Latitude 2100 for young students. Latitude 2100 has the look and feel of a rugged laptop, except it’s a netbook (or Dell wants it to be). You get the standard features that you would get with most netbooks, but Dell Latitude 2100 also comes a few features that help teachers keep track of what students are doing. For instance, the netbook comes with a network activity light (NAL) makes it easy for teachers to see who’s surfing the Internet instead of getting work done.

This netbook also lets schools updates what’s on the students’ machines via LAN. Dell Latitude 2100 seems like a decent option for students, but it does look like something businesses can be adopting in the future. The device is a bit heavier than regular netbooks and could cost as much as $500, so we are not talking about a cheap student netbook here. Will it catch fire? That remains to be seen.